In Good Taste #27: Owl & Pussycat Pies (with mince and slices of quince)
My twist on a festive classic; we fall down a runcible hole; a nostalgic gig and some actual new music
Well, hello there! How are you?
Good I hope. Thank you so much for being here.
(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipes, or Cultural Fun.)
The tree is up and (miraculously) the shopping is done. It is small sprouts that we’re yet to actually decorate said tree, wrap the presents or send any cards since those aren’t chores but pleasant festive rituals.
Whilst I do I will sip a glass of mulled wine and eat a mince pie. Today I give you the recipe for the pies. Next week the mulled wine. Neither is fermented. But both are very nice.
The mince pies have quince in them so made me think of Edward Lear’s The Owl And The Pussycat. You will recall the pair dined on “mince and slices of quince” on their wedding night “which they ate with a runcible spoon”.
Whilst musing on this I fell down a runcible Google hole. Let’s peer in together shall we?
Lear didn’t specify whether the mince his biologically ill-matched animal protagonists* ate at their wedding feast was minced meat or mincemeat. Perhaps both together, in the pre-18th century style? He hasn’t illustrated this section either so we have no clues to go on. We see the owl and the pussycat at sea with some honey, but I always assumed that that was provisions for the journey rather than an ingredient. This isn’t what troubles me.
My main issue is with the runcible spoon, chiefly because I don’t think Lear has any idea what “runcible” means. These days people will tell you that a runcible spoon is basically a spork and there are plenty of things for sale under that description. But Lear never gives a definition. In Twenty Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures, he introduces us to “The Dolomphious Duck, who caught Spotted Frogs for her dinner with a Runcible Spoon” and shows it as a sort of giant ladle.
In The Pobble Who Has No Toes, the Pobble’s Aunt Jobiska is described as owning “a runcible cat with crimson whiskers” and in a letter to a friend Lear wrote a poem describing himself as wearing “a runcible hat”.
Elsewhere in his work there are references to a goose and a wall, both also runcible. There are some good guesses at what the word might mean in some long-ago Straight Dope and Guardian Notes and Queries columns but they’re only really dealing with spoons. I can’t think of any quality which would unite spoons, hats, cats and the rest.
Lear is known for nonsense, but I find his particular brand of it unsatisfying. It’s too nonsensical. Just babble. You don’t feel anything about it. Contrast with his semi-contemporary Lewis Carrol who was also writing what was considered “nonsense verse”. His most famous, Jabberwocky (“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…” etc.), from Through The Looking Glass, is “explained” to Alice by Humpty Dumpty but even without knowing that a “wabe” is “the grass plot around a sundial” etc. you feel something: the strangeness of the landscape, the threat of the monster, the celebratory atmosphere once it’s vanquished. It’s nonsense but meaningful nonsense.
Anyway. Enough (literal) nonsense. Let’s get out of this runcible hole and make some pies before I start getting cross about Lear’s limericks and how they always end by lazily repeating the first line…
* Apparently there is an unfinished sequel about their children. I guess if Kermit and Miss Piggy could breed…
There’s a whole series of recipes here. You don’t need to make them all. You can use ready made pastry for the pies. Which will be lovely with or without the poached quinces. See the notes for how to use raw ones in the quincemeat or just use apple instead.
I would recommend poaching some quinces though. They are beautiful and fragrant and good for all sorts of things. Delicious on breakfast yoghurt. Lovely in a frangipane tart or alongside apples in a crumble. You can turn some of them into membrillo or quince candies. And the poaching liquid is the most glorious pink syrup. Come back next week why don’t you for some ideas of how to use it and also these cute little fruity jellies.
Recipe: Poached Quinces
You’ll only use a few of these in the pies but they keep, sitting in the syrup, for at least a couple of weeks and freeze well too.
Ingredients
500g white sugar
1l water
1 lemon
1 vanilla pod
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1kg quinces
Method
Put the sugar, water and spices in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar.
Halve the lemon and squeeze the juice. Add it to the pan (straining out the pips) and drop in the squeezed peels.
Peel and quarter the quinces and add them to the pan of syrup. You can either take out the cores now or wait until the fruit is soft. If you remove them now, tie the cores up in a muslin cloth and add it to the pan too.
Bring the syrup to a simmer. Tear a circle, the same diameter as your pan, from a sheet of baking paper and use it to cover the top of the liquid. This keeps the quinces submerged and helps them cook evenly.
Simmer until the fruit is soft and has turned pink, about three hours, then let the quinces cool in the syrup. Remove the parcel of cores (squeeze as much liquid out as you can) or cut the cores from the quince quarters.
Recipe: Quincemeat
This is a riff on Delia’s classic mincemeat recipe but I’ve played about with it over the years, making a few substitutions and upping both the spice and spirit levels. I love Delia but she is always very parsimonious with the booze. Along the way I’ve been inspired by both Felicity Cloake and Anna Highham. It makes three large jarsworth and keeps really well (at least a couple of years) so I always make the full amount. But scale down if you like.
If you can’t be bothered poaching quinces you could add raw grated fruit. Instead of - or as well as - the apple (see notes).
Ingredients
250g raisins
250g sultanas
250g currants
250g candied peel, finely chopped
250g shredded suet (veggie works just as well)
200g flaked almonds
200g glace cherries, halved or quartered
50g stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped
400g soft brown sugar
1 tbsp mixed ground spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp grated nutmeg
2 lemons
2 oranges
1 large Bramley apple, grated
400g (approx) poached quince, roughly chopped
400ml whisky
Method
Heat the oven to 150°C.
Put the dried fruit, suet, almonds, glacé cherries, ginger, sugar, spice and suet in a large oven-proof saucepan or high-sided baking tray.
Add the zest and juice of the oranges and lemons, the grated apple and the chopped poached quince and mix well.
Cover (with a lid or foil) and put in the oven for 2 hours.
Add the whisky, re-cover and return to the oven for another hour.
Allow to cool, stirring occasionally to break up the cooling fat.
Use immediately or transfer to sterilised jars and keep in a cool, dark cupboard until needed.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
If you are not using poached quinces but wish to add some quinciness to your minciness, use 1 grated raw quince.
Alternatively, if you have no quinces at all, double the amount of grated raw apple.
Recipe: Owl & Pussycut Pies (with mince and slices of quince)
Makes approximately 24 normal-sized mince pies or 48 tiny ones
I’m going to give you two different pastry recipes. One pâte sucrée, a sweet pasty I learned when I was at Leiths which I still make regularly. The other is based on Camilla Wynne’s lardy pastry from last year’s mince pie deep dive in Nicola Lamb’s excellent baking newsletter Kitchen Projects.
The pâte sucrée is sweet and crisp, the lardy pastry less so and very short. I prefer the sweeter one for tiny, bitesize pies and the lardy pastry for standard ones but both are lovely and will work for either.
For the lardy pastry
350g plain flour
good pinch salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
130g lard
100g butter, straight from the fridge
1 egg
1 tsp cider vinegar
60g chilled water
Method
Combine the flour, salt and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
Cut the lard and butter into 1cm cubes and add to the flour. Rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture mainly looks like breadcrumbs but with some larger pieces of fat still intact.
Mix the egg, vinegar and water in a small bowl and add about three quarters of it to the flour mixture. Use a cutlery knife to distribute it evenly and stir it in. See if a lump of the dough will come together if you squeeze it gently. If not add enough extra liquid so it does. You may not need it all.
Bring the pastry together into a ball and flatten into a disc. You may want to make two smaller balls/discs so you can bake two separate batches of pies. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least half an hour. You know what pastry’s like: it gets fussy if things are too warm. If you roll and bake immediately things might be a little greasy. Chilling will mean it’s lovely and crisp and crumbly. The uncooked pastry will keep for a few days in the fridge.
For the pâte sucrée
125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
100g egg yolks (approx 4)
250g plain flour
pinch salt
Method
Put the softened butter, sugar and egg yolks in a mixing bowl (or food processor) and beat (or pulse) until evenly combined.
Then add the flour and use a dough scraper to chop it into the butter mixture (or pulse in the food processor). Don’t work the dough too hard, just until there are no visible dry patches of flour left. Then bring it together into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least half an hour. It will keep for a few days until you’re ready to bake.
To make the pies
When ready to bake, heat the oven to 180°C.
Flour a work surface and roll half the pastry out to 1mm if using a 21-hole mini tart tray or 3mm if using a regular 12-hole one.
Cut circles to fit the dimples in the tray (this will depend on the depth of the holes but I find 11cm works well for a standard-size pie and 7cm for a mini one. Gently pat the circles into the indentations.
Fill with quincemeat (about 2tbsp for a standard pie or half a tbsp for a mini).
Then either cut a smaller circle (or shape - I like to use stars) and pop it on top as a lid, perhaps sealing with a dab or water or milk. Or cut thin slices of your poached quince and arrange them on top of the mincemeat, with or without a little pastry embellishment.
Bake for 20-25 mins for standard pies and 10-15 for tiny ones. Or until the pastry is golden brown.
Let cool in the tins for at least 10 mins or the pastry won’t be firm enough to remove without crumbling.
Enjoy immediately or they’ll keep in a tin for about a week.
Vouchers
Are you bored of me hawking my vouchers? I apologise. But here they are again. They make nice presents. Promise. Fermentation or pasta classes or a freezer filling service.
If you order one you’ll get a voucher via email that you can forward to print out for the recipient. Or you can drop me a line and I’ll pop a card in the post at no extra cost.
Cultural Fun
I went to see The Wonder Stuff at the weekend. They were one of my absolute favourite bands of the early 90s (pre-Britpop era). Not to mention that singer Miles Hunt was the defining crush of my teenage years. Afterwards I looked out my teenage diaries and confirmed that the last time I saw them was at Cambridge Corn Exchange on April 18th 1994 - a week before my 15th birthday - on the Construction For the Modern Idiot tour. They split up later that year and I cried absolute buckets.
This gig was part of a tour for the 30th anniversary of that album. 30 years! My how time flies etc…
The album got a bit of a critical panning when it came out but I liked it. Not as much as I liked Never Loved Elvis, but it meant a lot to me as it was the first album of theirs I was able to buy on release rather than playing fan catch up.
They played whole thing straight through and there really are some genuine bangers on there: Hot Love Now and Full Of Life (Happy Now). Plus Storm Drain which is lovely.
“We’re taking a break and then we’ll come back and pay some songs you actually like,” said Miles. And it was after the mini interval that the place really came alive. I was surprised but not shocked to find I still know every single word to every single song. Caught In My Shadow, Don’t Let Me Down, Gently, Golden Green, etc. etc.
They cleverly ended the set by playing Give, Give Give Me More, More, More so people were singing tunefully rather than bellowing for an encore. Then returned for Dizzy, ending with Ten Trenches Deep.
There’s a line in Mission Drive: “I wear it like a hairstyle/Or a stain upon my skin/But my flesh is getting cleaner/And my hair is growing thin.” Well. We’re none of us as young as we used to be and, looking down from the balcony, there were indeed a lot of bald heads on display in the mosh pit. Chaps who once probably had shaggy manes to headbang with and have now gone for the sensible buzzcut. But the fact there was a mosh pit tells you everything you need to know about the evening. I had a blast.
I’m aware that I seem a bit mired in nostalgia at the moment. I saw Pulp in the summer and have just booked tickets for Suede and Manic Street Preachers next July at Ally Pally. However, I am looking forward as well as back and will give you a recommendation for some music not made by people who’ve been going since I was pre-pubescent.
James and I met Joe Usher on a train from the Lake District last spring. We got chatting and he said he was an actor (studying at Bristol Old Vic at the time). I was impressed with his easy charisma and thought to myself: “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he becomes famous one day.” I hope he does so then I can boast about my foresight.
He makes music too. Really lovely, soulful R’n’B-ish stuff with sensitive, witty lyrics. My favourite songs are Change and These Days Are Mine but it’s all worth a listen.
Bye! See you soon!
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